The Mountain and the Wall (4 page)

“You shouldn’t need to,” said Dibir. “A woman herself should understand that it’s not something Allah is forcing upon her—her calling is to take care of her family, so let her stay home and do the right thing of her own free will.”

“Dibir, go preach to your own wife,” snapped Zumrud, only partly in jest. “I’ve had enough of these zealots. You can’t walk down the street without someone shoving leaflets into your hands—they’re
even there when you get on the bus, forcing their bulletins on you.”

“What bulletins?”

“Yours, Islamic ones,” said Kerim. “Yeah, I’m sick and tired of those hawkers. And you can’t get rid of them. One time we were sitting in a club, just hanging out and listening to music, nothing special. And all of a sudden this guy shows up. All in white, wearing a green skullcap, and holding a bundle of religious bulletins. Rustam explains to him man to man that his presence isn’t really required. So he leaves, or so it seemed. But within an hour he’s back. Must have forgotten that he’d already tried us.”

“You should have taken one and read it! Might have done you some good!” said Dibir.

Kerim snickered. “It does me good to work out, too, though I haven’t done it for a while now…but look, the hows and whens of
namaz
prayer just right aren’t really high on my list of priorities. If you ask me it’s all
khapur-chapur
.”

“Here you are making jokes, but you won’t feel like joking around on Judgment Day,” Dibir objected. “You think you’re so smart, but it’s not enough to study the material sciences. You need to look after your soul as well.”

Zumrud went over to the window and opened it. For some reason, the neighborhood was dark; there were no lights on anywhere. It was strangely quiet for that time of evening. Then, suddenly, the sound of barking. Everyone shifted in their seats. Zumrud looked around and saw Abdul-Malik in the doorway. He was in a police uniform and there was a stranger with him, a man of around forty with a mustache. Behind them in the darkness stood Maga.

“
A-a-assalamu alaikum
!” said Yusup cheerfully, standing up to greet the guests.

Kerim raised his glass.

“Well, as they say, here’s to the Motherland, here’s to Stalin!
Sakhl-i
.”

The others joined in the toast, clinking their glasses and exclaiming “
Sakhl’i
!”

“So how are things at the front?” asked Kerim, watching Abdul-Malik serve himself the
chudu
that Zumrud had warmed up for the guests.

Abdul-Malik stiffened, then answered quietly: “May Allah punish those with blood on their hands.”

“
Vallakh,
may it be so,” repeated Gulya mournfully.

“They think they’re so righteous and that we’re just filthy
murtads.
And it’s absolutely the other way around. Who are the ones sneaking around like jackals, anyway? Shooting people in the back? Mazhid was flagging down a car, and the guys inside opened fire and that was that. And then they came to Dzhamal’s house and called to him by name, and when he showed his face they shot him, point blank. They blew up Kurbanov’s car. And when Salakh Akhmedov was murdered, his own son was in on the plot. And how about all the cops they’ve killed? We really made them pay for it in Gubden…I’ve just come from there.”

“I got a call from one of my friends in Gubden,” Kerim broke in. “He says that you didn’t make much of a dent at all. Just a lot of noise, as usual. While you were storming the building, a whole bunch of people were standing around outside, watching, and the local
Wahhabis
were right there in the crowd. And everyone there knew they were there. After the operation they sat there in the ruins, rehashing the details.”

“What do you mean by that?” scowled Abdul-Malik.

“What I mean is that you knew who those guys were just the
same as everyone else, and you didn’t make a move. And now you act all surprised.”

“We didn’t have an order—we can’t take anyone without orders. We can’t do anything on our own initiative. We’re supposed to wait for troops from Moscow,” answered Abdul-Malik.

“That’s bullshit,” said Maga. But no one heard.

“Let the man have his dinner in peace,” said Zumrud. “In the meantime I want to make a toast. Here’s to me and Gulya still being able to sit here and make toasts!”

Everyone chuckled awkwardly.

Through the clinking of glasses a new sound was heard, something metallic. Anvar, who had dozed off, looked up and saw that the chandelier was trembling. Then silence. Kerim was also looking up at the chandelier; he remembered the great Makhachkala earthquake. He had been just a child then; it all seemed like some great, romantic adventure. It had been exciting to sleep in a tent, to kill time gossiping with Rashid and Tolik, to rush around the town in his baggy Soviet underwear.

Later, when he was a student, Tolik had had gotten interested in minerals, and one autumn Kerim had taken him to his village in the mountains, where there was a big limestone-dolomite ridge. Tolik got on a donkey and rode up to the ridge with a local boy as a guide, inspiring snide commentary at the
godekan,
where the locals sat around for days on end warming themselves under old burkas. When Tolik gathered two bags of mushrooms in the low mountain forest and hung them out to dry on Kerim’s veranda, people came over specially to view the strange sight. They didn’t eat mushrooms themselves; they thought they were all poisonous.

“I have something to talk to you about, Yusup,” said Abdul-Malik,
wiping his lips with a napkin. “Nurik here is my nephew, and…”

He nodded in the direction of the taciturn man with the mustache; Yusup went over and sat down next to them.

“It’s not a secret, really,” began Abdul-Malik in a low voice, fidgeting and lowering his eyes. “It’s about Kizilyurt. They’re holding elections there for the Oblast Assembly, and they won’t register Nurik. They keep coming up with some phony pretext. We have all his papers in order. Yesterday Nurik went to the Board of Elections with his
dzhamaat,
and security wouldn’t let them through. A couple of them made it inside somehow, but the officials there ripped up their papers and kicked them back out…A real nightmare, believe me. Our guys lost patience and before you know it things got out of control and people started shooting. One of my cousins was hit in the shoulder, and another one’s in the hospital. So then the younger guys decided to set some buildings on fire, and the others barely managed to restrain them. You know our
tukhum
isn’t just going to stand by and allow such disrespect.”

“
Vakh,
but where was the director at that point?”

“It was his own guards that did it.”

“But why?”

“He’s got a grudge against me. His nephew was murdered and left in his car, and then his car was blown up by a grenade, and he claims that it was our guys who did it.”

Abdul-Malik looked around at the others. The women had gone off somewhere, but Kerim, Dibir, Anvar, and Maga were in the corner arguing about something, jabbing their fingers at the goat sculpture.

“Was his nephew one of the men hiding in the mountains, or what?” asked Yusup.

“He was, and we looked for him everywhere. He had slipped flash
drives to some businessmen, you know what I mean. Along the lines of, ‘Donate money to jihad or we’ll kill you.’ Anyway, we finally found the nephew, and when we did, he raised a big stink. Protests, you name it,
ai-ui,
human rights organizations, that kind of thing. And now he won’t give Nurik any peace.”

Nurik just nodded.

“So what does all that have to do with me?” asked Yusup.

“There’s not a lot of time left for registering candidates—we have to hurry. And you know people in city government. Maybe you could put some friendly pressure on them, Yusup. I’d be eternally grateful.”

“What people? Where is Kizilyurt? Where’s the council?” Yusup spread his arms wide.

“I mean it, I’ll do a
magarych.
Go see Magomedov, talk to him, tell him what’s going on, say he has to do something, that kind of thing.”

Silence. Yusup sat thinking, tapping, his fingers on his sharp knee. Abdul-Malik waited, wiping his face absentmindedly with a napkin. As before, Nurik said nothing.

“We used to find goats like this on the mountain, only they were smaller,” they heard Dibir say in the corner. “We found some using a metal detector and made good money selling them. They’d been around five thousand years or something like that.”

Kerim went on the attack: “So why did you sell them? Why didn’t you take them to a museum?”

“We could have sold them in the museum too, to the director. But he doesn’t pay too well, so we found a buyer ourselves, cutting out the middleman, as they say. Besides, if you give them to the museum for a few kopecks, they turn around and sell them to their own buyers for serious money anyway,” Dibir explained. “My wife’s brother found an old rifle with copper bullets…he took it to the depository

and turned it in for free, and then the museum director got himself a new car on what he made from it. So go ahead brother, have
sabur,
why get all worked up about it?”

Yusup got out a second bottle of Kagor and poured a round.

“Of course I’ll talk to Magomedov. But I can’t promise anything…”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have the connections I used to, Abdul-Malik,” answered Yusup, offering him a glass. “You should try someone else. Anyway, we have to follow the law. They wounded your relatives, so you need to have them arrested and brought to trial.”

“No-o-o.” Abdul-Malik shook his head and refused the glass. “I’m not going to drink a toast until you give me your word. I don’t need anyone’s help with the law. By the way, where was your nephew last week?”

“Which one?”

“The one sitting right over there,” Abdul-Malik nodded toward Maga, raising his voice. “Some guy from Kiakhulai insulted him, so he loaded up a bunch of his friends and they drove over from Alburikent in seven cars and three motorcycles. They started beating the guy up, made a lot of noise, bang, bang! and so a whole crowd of the guy’s own people came running from Kiakhulai. More shooting, beatings, who knows what. One of our lieutenants tried to break it up and took a bullet in the knee.”

“That couldn’t have been Maga—he doesn’t have a gun”

“How do you know, Yusup? He started the fight, and then he ran away.”

Maga overheard them. He made no sign, waiting.

“What’s all this
khabary
about you, Maga?” asked Yusup.

“I didn’t lay a hand on anyone. We do get into something with
the guys now and then, but no way would we gang up on someone twenty to one. I’m no chicken!”

“I’m going to have a word with your father, Maga,” threatened Yusup.

“They worked everything out, made
masliat.
But still, none of it was any fun,” said Abdul-Malik, getting up from the table.

“Come on, sit down, let’s have another drink,” Yusup tried to stop him.

“I can’t, Nurik and I have a long evening ahead of us,” answered Abdul-Malik.

Nurik smoothed down his mustache and rose after his uncle. They said their farewells, clasping hands with everyone. Zumrud came in with a pot of tea, but Abdul-Malik and Nurik were already out the door. Yusup went with them.

“So was there a fight or not?” Anvar asked Maga.

“He’s a bullshit artist, that’s what he is,” said Maga irritably. “It wasn’t me who started it, Zapir only called me after they’d already started fighting.”

Dibir and Kerim were still standing by the little goat.

“Why are you all so upset?” asked Gulya, sailing into the room in her sparkly sweater.

“Sit down, have some tea,” said Zumrud.

Yusup came back in, slamming the door.

“I wanted to see them off, but they wouldn’t let me. It’s dark out there, I need to change the bulb…”

As though on cue, the chandelier went out, flickered a few times, and then flared on again.

“Must be the wiring,” said Kerim, and his glasses flashed.

Dibir looked at the window, saw his square face reflected there, and muttered something.